Charged particle detection systems can be used to detect charged particles passing through a volume.
One such charged particle detector is a charged particle detector which tracks charged particles including cosmic ray-produced muons or other charged particles. Natural background cosmic ray-produced charged particles, such as muons, are generated by cosmic rays and are highly penetrating. Primary cosmic rays interact in the upper atmosphere, producing many particles including pions which decay into muons. Muons interact only through the Coulomb and weak forces. Muons arrive at a rate of about 1/cm2/minute/steradian. The muon's lifetime at rest is 2.2 microseconds. At the average energy of 3 GeV, its relativistically time dilated lifetime is about 65 microseconds, corresponding to a path length of about 20 km. Since this is greater than the characteristic thickness (the scale-height, about 8 km) of the Earth's atmosphere and energy losses are slow (about 2 MeVcm2/gm), most muons produced by cosmic-ray interaction in the upper atmosphere survive to the Earth's surface and are not stopped or absorbed in the air. In addition, they cannot be shielded by practical thicknesses of matter.
A system and method for measuring the momentum of charged particle needed. It is believed that the method and system of the illustrative embodiments provides an effective way of measuring the momentum of cosmic ray muon or other charged particles.